Quote

Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions.

Alain de Botton

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Alain de Botton
Age: 54
Born: 1969
Born: December 20
Journalist
Philosopher
Publisher
Writer
City of Zurich
Alain De Botton
Small
Composed
Might
Central
Sometimes
Chains
Outwards
Made
Curiosity
Hub
Distance
Pictured
Questions
Distances
Large
Blunt
Huge
Extending

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We should not be frightened by appearances.
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A 'good job' can be both practically attractive while still not good enough to devote your entire life to.
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Politics is so difficult, it's generally only people who aren't quite up to the task who feel convinced they are.
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It's hard loving those who don't much like themselves: If you're so great, why would you think I'm so great.
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It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
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A virtuous, ordinary life, striving for wisdom but never far from folly, is achievement enough.
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We study biology, physics, movements of glaciers... Where are the classes on envy, feeling wronged, despair, bitterness.
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I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.
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Objectively good spaces to work rarely end up being so in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studios have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.
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We should keep a careful diary of our moments of envy: they are our covert guides to what we should try to do next.
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Pick up any newspaper or magazine, open the TV, and you'll be bombarded with suggestions of how to have a successful life. Some of these suggestions are deeply unhelpful to our own projects and priorities - and we should take care.
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Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with.
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Alcohol-inspired fights are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order.
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what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistenly available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding onto. (p123) Architecture of Happiness
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He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity - suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.
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Many moments in religion seem attractive to me even though I can't believe in any of it.
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We often lose our tempers not with those who are actually to blame just with those who love us enough to forgive us our foul moods.
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Life gives us no such handy markers - a storm comes, and far from this being a harbinger of death and collapse, during its course a person discovers love and truth, beauty and happiness, the rain lashing at the windows all the while.
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He did not mean to depress us, rather to free us from expectations which inspire bitterness. It is consoling, when love has let us down, to hear that happiness was never part of the plan.
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Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom.
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